Bah. As in the note by Richard Bartle, he explains that MUD was written by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle at Essex university. So I believe it is safe to assume he had a position in the thought process as well. Let's just read the message.

Which obviously shows that Richard Bartle, 1) Had a sense of what MUD was meant to be like and 2) Had the power to change it if he didn't like it.

If he had a sense that it being commercial was not what it was supposed to be then it never would have been licensed, would it?

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I seriously doubt, given where it went from there that they sat there cooking up a MUD and thought: Hmm, hopefully people will someday make mud servers and disallow profits!


As to where it mentions money, it most explicitly states on the bottom that it was licensed to Compuserve, although to still your disbelief:

on Richard Bartle's web page:

Regardless, I also doubt that Roy Trubshaw had no say in the matter, so I don't believe your conclusion really has strong legs to stand on.